Treating the animals we eat kindly

OK, this sounds a bit silly, but it’s not. According to this article titled It Died for Us more and more people are demanding gentle treatment for animals destined for the menus. I see nothing wrong with this approach, as I always consume non-vegetarian food (4 or 5 times a year) with a twinge of guilt. You may say how does it matter if eventually the animal is going to be fried or butchered? What about us then? Don’t we all die one day? Then why all the time we seek secure and comfortable lives? I think life, as long as it exists, should be free of pain and trauma. It doesn’t happen though, and it definitely doesn’t happen in the natural world where death comes in all forms of brutal flavors, but that’s what makes us human.

The essay delves into many aspects of cruelty and some opine, where do we draw the line? For instance, someone said, the fish immediate begins to suffocate the moment you take it out of water. Still, there are many cruel foods that can be avoided just because they cause so much pain, say for instance, read how cruelly veal is produced. Some fish dishes involve frying of fish while it is still alive, and one cook laughing claimed once in a TV show, “the longer they stay alive in the pan, the tastier they are.” To my shock the host joined him the ensuing laughter. Orientals butcher tortoises while they are still alive. Why so much pain? Just for a lousy meal? People should be institutionalized for having such tastes.

There is an anecdote in the above mentioned essay that deserves to be quoted here.

In a memoir published last year, “The Summer of Ordinary Ways,” the Minnesota writer Nicole Lea Helget described her childhood on a family farm. She said she was surprised when much of the reaction to her book focused on the way animals were treated instead of her family’s travails.

An anecdote about her father’s killing a recalcitrant cow with a pitchfork was meant to illustrate his frustrations, she said. The Publishers Weekly review of the book frames that story as “a staggering example of her father’s brutality” and refers to him as merciless.

“I thought it really reflected what can happen to a person,” Ms. Helget said in an interview. “I wasn’t really thinking about what was happening to the cow.”

She expressed confusion about the concern for animals serving a purpose as essential as food. “I just spent a little time in New York,” she said. “What seems abnormal to me is having a Great Dane in a one-bedroom apartment. I guess it’s all a matter of perspective.”

I think she should be given a taste of her father’s mental state to clear her perspective.